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We all have obsessions and those of us who lead teams may have a few for we are driven people. We like to refer to these foibles as being focussed, having a clear vision or something of that kind, but behind whatever management speak we wrap it up in we are still obsessed.

There are the things that we love to do and then there is everything else, but whatever our job is we have to get done what needs doing.

Planning helps, but as any military person knows your plans ho out of the window on first contact with the enemy. For most of us civilians the enemy will take the form of colleagues, customers and life in general all of whom will be queuing up to screw our best intentions.

What we have to do is to get our heads down and get on with it, doing our best to prioritise our time. If we work alone that is not too hard as long as we stay focussed, but when you are part of a team you need to be thinking about colleagues too. There is little point in sitting back smugly regarding your own success if everyone else is deep in the smelly stuff and your contribution to the team goals should be more important than your own.

So how do you do it? There is a lot of nonsense out there in terms of time management, but the one or two true sets of guidelines. One is the Eisenhower Method, the other is Pareto. I use both and have done for many years, but the key to both, and any other way of working, is being able to overcome procrastination.

If you dither nothing will get done, so work out what needs doing and get it done. No matter how hard it is or how much you loathe doing it, once it is done you can move on and most of the time you will better for having done it.

I had been watching a documentary on TV and had become bored enough to have picked up my tablet and started checking emails by the time that the programme ended. I was so engrossed that I did not realise that a new programme had begun until some of the dialogue started to prick my hearing.

The new show was about someone who had been jailed whilst living abroad and whilst it seemed a fair assessment to say that he was ignorant of the law that he had broken, there was little doubt that he had transgressed from what was presented. What struck me though was the complete denial of his friends and relatives that he was in any way at fault, the concept of other countries having different laws to us being dismissed as almost not relevant. Their dear relative/friend was simply a victim of silly foreigners and their odd ways.

It seems a feature of modern thinking that wrongdoing, if perpetrated by someone close, can just be glossed over and forgotten. Another example of this was on the news in one of my recent travels abroad when two late-teenagers died when they crashed the stolen car that they had been racing around the streets in. Parents and friends eulogised the pair as fine young men, yet the police confirmed that they had both been arrested several times for stealing cars. I try to be fair, but to me fine young men do not go around stealing cars and driving like idiots.

I am all for being supportive of friends or relatives who are in trouble and would not drop a friend simply because of something that they did, but that is different to denial that anything had happened. Helping someone get through troubles is an important part of your relationship with them, but part of that help is accepting what they have done and dealing with it in a mature way.

Our actions, and inactions, have consequences. Equally we should respect the ways of others and, when in their country, strive to understand that we may not be able to behave there in the same way as we do at home. For me the consequences of my failure to pay attention to the TV and turn it off at the end of my programme got me into this musing so perhaps I got off lightly, but then I was in the privacy of my own home. But when out in our own or other people’s communities we should be prepared to conform or the consequence may well be loss off liberty or life.

For some years now the concept of continuous improvement has been embedded into management culture. We have had all the Japanese influences, lean manufacturing (and then lean everything else, except, perhaps, in management speak where fat is good it would seem), and so there is a general willingness to work towards improving product and process. Some of this is disguised in the throwaway culture we have with cars, white goods and technology where as soon as you have bought the latest the next generation is announced, but there is one area where improving the breed seems to be not just overlooked, but is sometimes supressed. Read more…

The obvious positive that you can take from working for a poor boss is that you can see how not to do it. Learning from your own mistakes and failures is great, but watching others screw up is all very good experience and you can benefit a lot from it, but there is another, often overlooked, plus side to working for a dodgy boss. Read more…

Timing is everything; when you get it right life is good, but the margin between hero and twit can be very small indeed. Luck plays a big part of course, but Lady Luck is a fickle companion and sometimes experience is what you need to avoid landing in the smelly stuff. Read more…

The Case of the Vanishing Bog Roll is not one that you will find amongst the cases of Mr Holmes nor, perhaps, is it likely to crop up as a plot on Midsomer Murders, but it has kept us amused for a day or two and has added to the range of memories I have of this mundane, yet essential, consumable.Read more…